WASHINGTON -- The first thing that caught my eye when I entered the office
of Peter Romero, the State Department's chief of Latin American affairs,
was
the stack of big cardboard maps leaning against the wall next to his desk.

I would have thought that the first map in Romero's pile would be that
of Mexico,
undoubtedly the most important U.S. bilateral relation in the region. Or
Brazil,
whose recent financial crisis is still threatening the economies of its
neighbors.

But the first map on Romero's stack was of Colombia.

``I'm spending more time on Colombia than on any other single country,''
Romero
said when I pointed at his maps. It has been like that for several months
now, he
said. And it's not just because of last week's annual U.S. certification
of countries'
cooperation in the war on drugs.

The State Department's current focus on Colombia may be partly due to the
fact
that the Treasury Department has taken over most U.S. issues tied to Mexico
and
Brazil. But it is also due to U.S. projections that Colombia's coca production
will
grow substantially in the near future, and that Colombia's guerrillas could
pose
serious trouble throughout Latin America.

In Congress, Republican hard-liners are talking about the ``Balkanization''
of
Colombia, warning that the 16,000 Marxist rebels of the Revolutionary Armed
Forces of Colombia (FARC) are in control of much of southern Colombia,
while
the government retains the center and right-wing paramilitary groups dominate
the
north.

Elsewhere in Latin America, diplomats privately express fears that Colombia's
war
could spill over to Ecuador, Venezuela and Panama. Many are nervous about
a
possible escalation of U.S. military involvement in the region if one of
the 200 U.S.
military anti-narcotics trainers in Colombia is kidnapped or hurt by the
FARC
rebels.

Romero has a more immediate concern -- that Colombia's coca production,
which
according to U.S. estimates grew by 26 percent last year, will soar over
the next
two years.

Coca growers have been moving out of Bolivia and Peru, and have begun planting
coca in Colombia's southern states of Caqueta and Putamayo, where they
enjoy
protection from FARC guerrillas, he said. In two years, these plants will
have
grown, as will the screams of U.S. anti-drug agencies.

The expected rise in Colombia's coca production will also complicate Latin
American efforts to get the United States to drop its annual certification
process,
whereby the White House grades each country's anti-drug efforts. Latin
Americans see this as an act of arrogance by the world's largest drug consumer.

Romero conceded that there should be ``some adjustments'' to the U.S.
certification process. ``At some point, we will have to agree to some revisions,''
he
said.

Another U.S. official told me that, among the ideas being tossed around
within the
Clinton administration for possible submission to Congress, is scaling
back the
annual certification process to once every two or three years.

A second proposal would call for evaluating countries' anti-narcotics performance
by issues -- such as drug eradication efforts or drug lord extraditions
-- rather than
passing grades on nations as a whole.

Will this be done, I asked. Romero looked at his watch, and rose his hands.
Half
an hour had gone by, and he had to rush to another meeting. On Colombia,
I
guess.

You can e-mail Andres Oppenheimer at
aoppenheimer@herald.com
and read his columns on HeraldLink: www.herald.com/americas/archive/oppen